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blue bits. red rocks.
Monday 8 March 2010

To his credit, the president pushed through a stimulus bill that prevented us from falling off the cliff. But he refused, as FDR had done, to brand the crisis that had occurred as the direct result of Republican ideology and governance. He refused to explain to the American people why deficit spending in times of a crashing downward spiral is a virtue and not a vice. And he refused to call out — let alone even answer — Republican politicians attacking him from his first days of office for deficit spending, although they had just created as much debt in 8 years as in the previous 200-plus with enormous tax breaks for the wealthy and a trillion dollar war “off the books,” neither of which they even considered paying for. As a result, he got little credit for having prevented another Great Depression, and now there are two competing narratives, that the stimulus saved us and that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. With all the talk of hope and change, the American people were expecting something very different from the new Democratic majority. The president insisted on bipartisan solutions for problems Republican “solutions” had created, for which the imaginary bipartisans on the other side have not, and will not, cast a single vote. Making matters worse, at a time when Americans are — and should be — deeply suspicious of big business, these “bipartisan” solutions consistently seem to gravitate toward that golden mean between the public interest and the special interests (in this case, of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries). Drew Westen

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